Monthly Archives: October 2011

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Great Nations

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It took me by surprise when I learned that Monday is Columbus Day – the observance has completely fallen off my IHR (Internal Holiday Radar), a sixth sense that triggers the release of euphoric chemicals that flood the body when a day off is about to happen.

That’s probably because I’ve worked every Columbus Day since I was in the sixth grade. I would have missed it entirely this year had I not found myself in a conversation about what might or might not come in the mail next week. I admire their work, but the people of the U.S. Postal Service are the last ones to know when a holiday falls out of favor.

It’s pretty obvious that on the October holiday/observance landscape, Columbus Day is on the decline while Halloween continues, ominously, to rise. Though if you’re Native American, Columbus Day IS Halloween – a chilling reminder of the closeness of death.

Randy Newman summed it all up in this song, performed in Stuttgart.

Not a huge ovation, but the Germans in the audience have likely become accustomed to the complicated feelings that accompany true accounts of European history. But you have to credit Mr. Newman for boiling it all down to the essence.

Here’s a list of days off for federal workers from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management:

Friday, December 31, 2010 – New Year’s Day
Monday, January 17 – Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Monday, February 21 – Washington’s Birthday
Monday, May 30 – Memorial Day
Monday, July 4 – Independence Day
Monday, September 5 – Labor Day
Monday, October 10 – Columbus Day
Friday, November 11 – Veterans Day
Thursday, November 24 – Thanksgiving Day
Monday, December 26 – Christmas Day

With so much pressure in Washington for the government to save money, how long before someone proposes a schedule of unpaid holidays to go hand-in-hand with the elimination of Saturday mail delivery? Anything to get those federal employees off the clock! We have lots of candidates. Here are some in October alone:

International Day of Older Persons ―Saturday, October 1, 2011
International Day of Non-Violence ― October 2
World Habitat Day ― October 3
World Teachers’ Day ― October 5
World Post Day ― October 9
World Mental Health Day ― October 10
International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction ― October 12
World Sight Day ― October 13
White Cane Safety Day ― October 15
International Day of Rural Women ― October 15
World Food Day ― October 16
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty ― October 17
Boss’s Day ― October 17
Alaska Day ― October 18
World Development Information Day ― October 24
United Nations Day ― October 24
World Day for Audiovisual Heritage ― October 27
Nevada Day ― October 28

How wonderfully ironic it would be to force people to take a day without pay to observe the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty!

What holidays would you like to add to the calendar?

The Baboon Congress

Overheard Conversations

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Today’s guest post is by Edith.

Earlier today I was waiting for a city bus at a bus stop in downtown Minneapolis after making a nice haul at the 25￠-a-book-sale. A few years ago, people would just wait for their buses in silence, but now there are a few people who, naturally, yack on their cell phones while they wait. I don’t try to listen to their conversations, because most of them are boring. I mean, how many times when I’m shopping at Target do I want to hear, “Yeah, I’m at Target right now, picking up paper towels” or at a bus stop, “I’m waiting for the #5 bus”? But today, I’m pretty sure I overheard the logistics of a crime-in-progress.

A ordinary-looking woman crossed the street to get to the bus stop. She had a suitcase and was talking on her cell phone. I heard the fairly normal cell phone line, “I just made the copies at the library and now I’m at the bus stop and I think I’ll make it there on time.” Yawn. Then I heard, “You’ll have to meet me at HCMC at 4:00 and I’ll pass off the suitcase and the money.” My ears pricked up. Whoa! What sort of shady deal was this?

Unfortunately, right at that moment, my bus pulled up and I got on. The woman must have been waiting for a different bus because she did not board the bus I was on. But I’m still wondering, “Why does she have to “pass off” both a suitcase and money at HCMC? Was she talking with a friend or was this some sort of undercover “business” dealing?

What suspicious activity do you think was being planned in that conversation I overheard?

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High School Heroics

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Here’s a fresh note from our perennial sophomore, Bubby Spamden of Wendell Wilkie High School.

Hey Mr. C.,

I know people your age like to gripe about us high school kids because we’re “soft” and “lazy” and “ungrateful” and we’re addicted to our “gadgets.” I know I’m guilty on all counts. But my Life Skills teacher, Mr. Boozenporn, says you guys weren’t all that different when you were in high school. He says every generation is accused of being dumber and weaker and less excellent by the generations that came earlier. And while overall test scores may be down a bit, the pressure to be super as an individual keeps going up and up and up.

What do I mean?

There’s this girl – Brianna Amat. She managed to get on the football team at Pinckney High School in Michigan because she’s such a good kicker on the girl’s soccer team. Fair enough, I guess. But then she went and got voted to be the Homecoming Queen and got to go out on the football field at halftime and get a tiara put on her head while she was wearing her uniform! And then when the Pinckney Pirates were one point behind in the second half (because she missed a point-after in the first half), she kicked the field goal that beat their archrival, Grand Blanc!

So she managed to corner two of the most prized roles in high school in the very same night – homecoming queen and football hero. The only top roles she left on the table are The Kid Who Always Has Money and The Kid Whose Parents Are Never Home. That’s pretty amazing. It means she’s probably got, like, a record percentage of other students at the school with a crush on her. And it lifts up the bar for anybody else who wants to be really, really celebrated.

People say kids today are a lot more open to all kinds of people doing different things they aren’t “supposed” to do. That might be true, but I don’t think anybody else will ever be able to equal Brianna’s feat, even though I know for a fact that there are a couple of guys at Wendell Wilkie High who would very much like to be Homecoming Queen. No big deal, they just really feel comfortable in tiaras.

Anyway, I guess the point is that not everybody my age is good-for-nothing. Some are good-at-everything. And some, like Brianna Amat, are living out pretty incredible stories.

Your Pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby that forty years ago, as both homecoming queen and football hero, Brianna would have been required by unwritten high school law to date herself. So I’m glad to see things have changed. Compared to the old days, there are many more opportunities for high school kids to get that feeling of being celebrated today. Brianna gets our attention because she happened to corral two of the classic favorites.

What was the high school honor you most wanted to win?

Poems, Uncategorized

Expanding Universe Haiku

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The winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics are three American scientists who asked some important questions and wound up getting answers they didn’t expect.

Hubble's snapshot of the backyard, courtesy of NASA

As a result they gave us this confounding image of a universe that is expanding rapidly, with stars and galaxies rushing away from the center at ever-increasing speeds.

How’s that?

For folks (like me) who write news stories and summaries, Nobel week is a challenge and an education. In trying to explain how a prize was won, we’re called on to distill and decipher other people’s complicated multi-million-dollar research. Do you really think I can, with little knowledge or understanding of the field, step in and do a better job explaining a major technical principle in fewer words than the scientist who has spent his or her life struggling with the same information?

Some topics don’t like to be compressed.

But try I must. So why not take it all the way down to the minimum? Here’s a challenge – boil the expanding universe down to three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five in the third.

Go.

Galaxies racing
faster away from center
Mama will be pissed.

Dark Energy is
The unseen motivator
Behind the madness

The whole universe
Receding away from you
It’s not personal

The      spaces        between
the       words      in      this        haiku       are
bigger.          What’s             up,                          huh?

Leave your own haiku, or just explain how the universe will end.

The Baboon Congress

An Ode To The Nematode

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Today is my birthday, and I am determined to relax, no matter how much work it takes.
Fortunately I have great help from people like my good friend Jim of Clark’s Grove, who wrote today’s guest post. With a few forthright words about nematodes, Jim has helped me understand my true role in the universe and has placed my birthday in its proper context. To anyone who says “host” is not a decent job description, I say, ‘Pal, we’re all hosts.’

Here’s Jim’s post:

I suspect that many people know a lot about something which is not widely known by most other people. I am thinking about unusual information that might be gained through professional training, or from involvement in a hobby, or by somehow gaining access to unusual information. I happen to know quite a bit about nematodes, a group organisms that I think are a mystery to the general public. My knowledge of nematodes came mostly from my study of these organisms as a graduate student. I would like to share some of the information I have about these very significant and severely overlooked creatures with the hope that you will share information about something that you think has been largely ignored.

Nematodes, which are also known as round worms, are the most numerous multicellular animal on earth. There are some single celled organisms that outnumber nematodes, but nematodes have exceeded all other animals with more than one cell when counting the total number of individuals. If you removed all the soil and water from the earth and left the nematodes, the large populations of nematodes found everywhere would show you where the soil and water was previously located. Most nematodes are very small, only a millimeter or two in length, although you might have seen some of the larger parasitic ones that are several inches long in the stools of your pets. Some whales contain parasitic nematodes that are more than 20 feet long.

A Nematode with a Nematode Inside.

Nematodes parasitize just about everything including all kinds of animals and a wide range of plants. People suffer from many kinds of nematode parasites; including pin worms, hook worms, and the worms that cause trichinosis which you can get if you don’t do a good job of cooking pork. In fact, there are even some nematodes that are parasitic in other nematodes. If you look closely at the picture I provided you will see two nematodes because this is a picture of a nematode with a parasitic nematode in its body cavity. I came across this parasitized nematode during my study of free living nematodes found in soil. The drawing was done with ink on scratch board following instructions for making nematode drawings that came from a famous nematologist, Gerald Thorne. Thorne was very devoted to the study of nematodes which he was sure would be found in soil samples from the moon. He was certain of this because he knew they are found everywhere on earth.

I got started in nematology by doing a research project on plant parasitic nematodes, some of which can severely damage plants. However, most of my efforts in nematology were centered on the taxonomy of a group of free-living nematodes which led me to discover and describe a dozen new species of nematodes. Most people who work on the taxonomy of larger organisms would not expect to discover such a large number of new species. When it comes to nematodes, it is not hard to find numerous new species because most of the existing species have not been described.

I have attempted to dazzle you with some information about the wondrous group of organisms called nematodes. You probably weren’t aware of the huge number of these organisms hidden in soil and water everywhere and also found as parasites in or on many animals and plants. In fact, you might have harbored or still be harboring some of them, yourself. I think I was infested with pin worms when I was a kid. In those days many school children suffered from infestations of these very small worms. I wonder if you have information about something that is unusual or not well known to the general public.

Are you familiar with something that is being ignored?

Uncategorized

Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

During a recent conversation with my son, I inadvertently let it slip that I think his children, a pair of girls aged 14 and 12, are selfish little heathens who exhibit all the social decorum one would expect from a pair of hungry wolverines.

One example: They put their elbows on the table, lower their faces to a scant 2 inches above the plate and proceed to gnaw and inhale their food, always accompanied by a cascade of grotesque slurping and chewing noises reminiscent of a National Geographic special about the food chain on the African savannah.

In response to this observation, my son said “manners are dead”. “I’m raising these children to be ‘natural creatures'”, he said, “wild and free and unencumbered by the petty rules of society.”

And he pointed out that Emily Post herself considered good etiquette to be a style of behavior intended to help other people feel comfortable. If his children feel comfortable eating their pizza as if they have just buried their faces in the warm entrails of an exhausted antelope, what right do I have to judge them?

He suggested that it was bad manners for me to even bring this up, and especially uncouth for me to pretend that I just let the criticism “slip” when in fact I have been brooding over this for years.

Dr. Babooner, while there may be some truth to the assertion that I have been thinking about this for a long time, it was never my intention to attempt to correct the atrocious behavior of these young barbarians. They are irredeemable. I would sooner try to convince voracious Asian Carp to swim back downstream.

But if etiquette is all about helping others relax, why must I always be the one to sacrifice? How come no one changes his or her behavior to help ME feel comfortable?

Sincerely,
Crabby Gramps

I told Crabby Gramps I was alarmed by his use of the world “irredeemable”. That strikes me as a shockingly final judgment for one to level against young relatives. And frankly, I said, his son is correct. Etiquette is dead – finally killed by the Internet in the same way table manners were done in by the State Fair, along with the table itself.

As for feeling “comfortable”, that must come from within. If you are looking for someone else to MAKE you feel comfortable, you are likely to wait for a very long time. Rather, C.G. should just decide to approach dinner with the mindset of a wildlife biologist. Observe and take notes. These are fascinating creatures who cannot be tamed!

You might also just “let it slip” that any “wild and free” creatures roaming in your house will have to wear radio collars and ear tags for the duration – for their own protection, of course. And one can never rule out the judicious use of tranquilizer darts.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

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Heads and Tales

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Today is the birthday of the British Music Hall star Stanley Holloway, who entered the world on October 1st, 1890, and proceeded to work through some amazing years of transition in the world of show business, performing on radio, stage, in TV and movies. Holloway’s greatest fame came as Alfred P. Doolittle in “My Fair Lady,” both in the original Broadway production and in the 1964 film.

He strikes a familiar note for us with this old music hall favorite:

This is a classic example of humor made out of something that wouldn’t be funny at all if you actually witnessed it. Here’s another from Mr. Holloway:

Heads chopped off by selfish husbands, children eaten by lions. Har, har, har.
Don’t get the joke?
Guess you had to not be there.

When is it OK to laugh at the misfortune of others?